Odyssey 10.494 · Book 10, lines 494–495
He alone keeps his mind among the dead
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Circe — τῷ καὶ τεθνηῶτι νόον πόρε Περσεφόνεια οἴῳ πεπνῦσθαι, τοὶ δὲ σκιαὶ ἀίσσουσιν·
To him, even in death, Persephone granted understanding, that he alone should keep his wits; but the others flit about as shadows.
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The setting
Circe explains why Teiresias, and only Teiresias, is worth consulting. Persephone gave the dead seer a gift withheld from all the other dead: his understanding did not die with him.
A note on this passage
Circe states the Homeric picture of death in one contrast. Teiresias keeps his mind because the queen of the dead granted it to him specially; everyone else is reduced to a flitting shadow. To be dead, in this poem, is to lose not only your body but your very understanding.
The last word does the work. The ordinary dead "dart about as shadows," mindless outlines with a person's shape and nothing of the person left. This is why the underworld errand is grim rather than hopeful: Odysseus is going to a place where the dead cannot even think, to find the one exception. It also quietly measures the cost of the journey against the value of the single voice that can still answer him.
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